Reproduced, from the «Rruga e Partise» January 5, 1971
The «Naim Frasheri» Publishing House Tirana, 1971

Eighty-one Communist and Workers Parties held a meeting in Moscow ten
years ago. This meeting dealt a heavy blow to modern revisionism and
marked a victory of historic significance for Marxism-Leninism. It will
be recorded in history as the meeting which blocked the road and said
«Halt!» to revisionism, which brought about its first major defeat,
putting an end to its ascent and marking the beginning of the great
polemics between the two lines and courses in the revolutionary
communist movement of the world.

Instead of an international forum which, according to the
Khrushchevites, should have sanctioned the course adopted by the XX
Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and further
developed by them after it, the Moscow Meeting was turned into an arena
of stern ideological struggle between the proletarian revolutionary
line represented by the Communist Party of China together with the
Party of Labor of Albania, and the revisionist opportunist line
represented by the Soviet leadership, which had abandoned the
principles of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism and was
slipping into open betrayal and great state chauvinism.

The meeting of the 81 parties took place at a very critical moment for
the communist movement. After Stalin’s death and, particularly,
following the XX Congress, a retrogressive, opportunist and revisionist
trend was being developed and spread which by playing on the new
conditions and the demagogic slogan of «creative Marxism», was moving
further and further away from the basic principles of revolutionary
theory and practice. It was trampling underfoot the joint stand of the
Communist Parties adopted at the 1957 Moscow Meeting. This trend
constituted a serious danger, for it strove to replace the class
struggle with class conciliation and the revolution with bourgeois
reforms, to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and the
construction of socialism.

The international communist and workers’ movement was faced with a
fierce counter-revolutionary attack. Its unity was in very grave
danger. Under these conditions no genuine Marxist-Leninist Party, no
honest communist could remain a passive onlooker. To have become
reconciled to this situation would have meant to fall into revisionism
oneself. To have remained silent and stood aside would have meant to
become an accomplice in the revisionist betrayal and, sooner or later,
to have fallen into opportunism oneself. Therefore, it was necessary to
maintain a clear-cut stand. The cup was running over and there was no
alternative.

At the 1960 Moscow Conference, the Communist Party of China, the Party
of Labor of Albania and many other participants, standing loyal to the
teachings of Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian
internationalism, courageously raised their voices, exposed the
revisionist splitters and defended the Marxist-Leninist unity of the
international communist movement.

The principled, determined and revolutionary stand of our Party was
clearly expressed in the historic speech delivered by Comrade Enver
Hoxha at the Moscow Conference, which has recently been published and
is now known to everyone.

In this speech Comrade Enver Hoxha raised before the representatives
the problem of the differences which had arisen within the ranks of the
international communist movement, openly with force and with all the
earnestness demanded by the occasion. In a carefully argumented and
convincing way he showed that the situation was extremely serious and
that it was necessary to stop on the brink of disaster while it was
still not too late. The urgent need to take a clear-cut and final stand
was dictated especially by the fact that revisionism had infected,
first and foremost, the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union which was utilizing the prestige, authority and power of the
Soviet Party and State to spread opportunism.

With rare communist sincerity, courage and devotion to principle,
Comrade Enver Hoxha made a crushing denunciation of the revisionist
line, especially of Nikita Khrushchev’s opportunist viewpoints on all
the most essential manifestations and on the most important problems of
world developments of strategy and tactics and on the relations between
the communist parties and socialist countries. On the basis of a
scientific Marxist-Leninist analysis and with indisputable facts, he
showed that the differences that had arisen were not the results of
partial mistakes and actions of this or that person but the
consequences of a whole anti-Marxist political and ideological line and
orientation of the Soviet leadership. In line with Leninist teachings
and tradition, he showed that, in the situation which had been created,
there was no room for sentiment, that the truth should be faced no
matter how bitter and painful it may be, that the general interests of
the revolution and socialism should be placed above everything. «The
authority of Leninism», Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed, «has been and
continues to be decisive. It should be established in such a manner as
to purge erroneous views everywhere and in a radical way. There is no
other way open for us, communists. If there are things that must and
should be said outright just as they are, this should be done now, at
this Conference, before it is too late».

Comrade Enver Hoxha carried his consistent and penetrating criticism
through to the end, exposing the origin of the opportunist and
revisionist views of the Soviet leadership. He showed that the source
of the evil should be sought in the XX Congress of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union and its decisions, which the Soviet leadership
tried in every way and at all costs to impose on the entire communist
movement. Practice until that time had given ample proof that the line
adopted by the XX Congress, which had been applauded by all the
opportunist and reformist elements and the bourgeoisie and reaction as
a whole, had had very harmful consequences for communism. The
counter-revolution in Hungary, the bitter events in Poland, the attacks
against the Soviet system, the major upsets in many communist parties
and the serious differences under discussion at the Moscow meeting
itself, testified to what a tortuous and endless road the communist
movement was entering as a consequence of the line proclaimed by the XX
Congress. «We pose the question» comrade Enver Hoxha said, «why have
these things happened in the ranks of the international communist
movement, in the ranks of our camp following the XX Congress?... We
should be extraordinarily concerned about such a thing,» he stressed,
«and we should find the source of the disease and cure it. Certainly,
the disease will not be cured either by patting the renegade Tito on
the back or by declaring that modem revisionism has been defeated for
all time as the Soviet comrades claim». Thus he put his finger on the
sore spot.

In order to pave the way for its treacherous theses formulated at the
XX Congress the Khrushchev group needed, in the first place, to «shoot
down», to remove from their midst Stalin and «Stalinism» and, secondly
to camouflage their own revisionist activity under the slogan of
«creative Marxism». To do this they had proclaimed that the main danger
was «dogmatism and sectarianism» while modem revisionism was something
allegedly overcome, exposed and defeated.

In order to fight Stalin and «Stalinism», the Khrushchevites trumped up
the so-called fight «against the cult of the individual and its
consequences». Under this slogan, they launched, in fact, a general
attack against Marxism-Leninism, against the political and ideological
foundations of the Soviet Party and State.

At the XX Congress, Khrushchev and his associates made most monstrous
slanders against Stalin, blotted out one of the most glorious periods
of the history of the Soviet Union, discredited and negated the
communist party, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Soviet
socialist order. They launched a major campaign to purge revolutionary
cadres and to rehabilitate enemies and renegades from communism. Under
the pretext of the struggle against «Stalinism», they interfered in a
brutal way in the internal affairs of other parties in order to change
their leaderships and bring to power opportunist and revisionist
elements.

The slanders of the Khrushchevites against Stalin were an unexpected
gift for the imperialists and reaction, a powerful weapon to combat
Marxism-Leninism, socialism and, in particular, the Soviet Union
itself. Great confusion, a grave situation was created and serious
difficulties arose within the ranks of the communist movement.

It is the great merit of the Party of Labor of Albania and Comrade
Enver Hoxha that, with Marxist-Leninist devotion to principle, they
exposed the counter-revolutionary essence of the anti-Stalinist
campaign and demonstrated with many arguments that behind this campaign
lay hidden a great betrayal of the revolution and socialism. On the
Stalin issue, our Party was not guided or prompted only by its feelings
of love and respect for Stalin as a close collaborator of Lenin and a
great leader of the first socialist State and the world proletariat,
but by profound considerations of principle as well. The attitude
towards Stalin and his work was the attitude towards Marxism-Leninism
and the historic experience of the October Revolution and the
dictatorship of the proletariat. By defending Stalin, the Party of
Labor of Albania defended Marxism-Leninism and the principles of
proletarian internationalism, it defended the revolutionary line, it
defended the Soviet Union and its socialist achievements. «Stalin’s
good and immortal work» Comrade Enver Hoxha said, «must be defended by
all. Whoever fails to defend them is an opportunist and a coward».

At the Moscow Meeting our Party and all the Marxist-Leninists showed
that in the campaign against Stalin, the aim of the Khrushchevites was
the abandonment of the entire revolutionary heritage from Lenin and the
practice of socialist construction. They expressed their great concern
about the future of the Soviet Union and sounded a warning of the
danger threatening the achievements of the October Revolution and the
future of socialism in the land of the Soviets. They appealed to the
leaders of the Party of the Soviet Union to stop at this point and turn
back to the right road.

But the Soviet revisionist leaders persisted in their course and
continued on the road of betrayal. Today everyone can see the
consequences of this stand.

For the Soviet Union, the decade of the 60’s constitutes a period of
radical changes in its internal life and in its international
relations. It is characterized by two important moments which mark a
major retrogressive and counter-revolutionary turning point. This is
the period of the complete restoration of capitalism, of Soviet society
turning into a bourgeois society and the transition of the Soviet Union
to an open and aggressive imperialism. The Bolshevik Party and the
dictatorship of the proletariat were destroyed and the socialist
construction was undermined. They have been replaced by the party of
all the people and by the state of all the people, which are forms of
the dictatorship of the new revisionist bourgeoisie.

The reforms carried out by Khrushchev and his followers have
consolidated the bureaucratic caste and have strengthened the
dominating positions of the stratum of the new revisionist bourgeoisie
in the whole life of the country. The present Soviet society has
assumed the typical features of a bourgeois society in all its aspects.
From a base of revolution and socialism the Soviet Union has been
turned into a base of counter-revolution, a capitalist and imperialist
Power.

In spite of this, the Stalin issue so consistently defended by our
Party and by all genuine Marxist-Leninists, continues to harass the
Khrushchevite revisionists. From time to time they feel obliged to
speak of a reappraisal of Stalin. This is, of course, sheer demagogy,
for a correct and full reappraisal of Stalin can be done only with the
final overthrow of modern revisionism in the Soviet Union. But the fact
that the revisionists feel obliged to speak of this matter shows that
the masses of Soviet workers, of revolutionaries and of people, keep
Stalin’s ideas fresh in their minds, that the masses are becoming more
and more aware of the betrayal which has gripped them by the throat.
And this discontent of the masses, which will certainly grow and become
more and more intense, is the best guarantee that revisionism will be
crushed and that the Soviet Union will return to the glorious path of
Lenin and Stalin.

Under the pretext of Stalin’s alleged mistakes Khrushchev and his group
strove to rehabilitate Yugoslav revisionism. It is a well-known fact
that the international communist movement had unanimously condemned
this bourgeois and reactionary variant of opportunism, and had proved
on the basis of many facts that the Yugoslav brand of revisionism was a
dangerous agency of U.S. imperialism against communism and the
socialist countries. But the Soviet revisionist leaders who had
embarked on the road of revisionism themselves and who had many things
in common with the Yugoslav revisionists, were not interested in having
the principled battle against them continue, in having their
reactionary substance and activity exposed. What they were after was
not the fight against revisionism but against revolutionary
Marxism-Leninism, not the fight against the opportunists who were
replacing Marxism-Leninism with all kinds of Trotskyite and reactionary
theories and theses, but against all those who remained loyal to the
Leninist teachings and whom the revisionists labelled «dogmatic» and
«sectarian».

The Party of Labor of Albania which more than anyone else had felt the
hostile activity of the Yugoslav revisionists coordinated with that of
the U.S. imperialists on its own back, expressed its determined opinion
that, in order to safeguard the unity of the socialist camp and the
international communist movement, it was essential to fight and expose
modern revisionism through to the end.

In his speech at the Moscow Meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha made a
profound analysis of the ideological content and political activity of
the Yugoslav revisionists. Contrary to Khrushchev’s trumped up charges,
he emphasized that Stalin had not been mistaken but had been absolutely
correct in his assessment of the Yugoslav revisionists. And citing a
host of facts, he showed that they constituted a major threat to the
cause of communism. Comrade Enver Hoxha severely condemned the stand of
the Soviet leaders, who were systematically striving to rehabilitate
Yugoslav revisionism, and, backed by many facts, he demonstrated the
ideological and political affinity which existed between them. He
stressed that revisionism, therefore, was not a local phenomenon
confined to Yugoslavia alone, but was being spread in an alarming
fashion to other parties as well. This made it more than essential that
the fight against revisionism should be raised to a new and higher
level, that revisionism should be considered as the principal danger to
the international communist movement. The approval of this thesis by
the Moscow Conference was a heavy blow to the revisionist line.

Using the example of Yugoslavia, Comrade Enver Hoxha gave a warning of
where the other modern revisionists who were adopting the course of
alienating themselves from the principles of Marxism-Leninism would
lead. Life has completely confirmed and continues daily to confirm,
this correct conclusion of our Party. The chaotic and insecure
situation which can be observed in various revisionist countries, the
confusion, disintegration, and innumerable difficulties which accompany
their course, are a reflection of, and often, identical with, the ever
more acute situation and difficulties apparent in Yugoslavia.

In his speech at the Moscow Meeting, Comrade Enver Hoxha refuted the
theoretical formulations of the XX Congress of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union and dealt a crushing blow at the practical stand of
the Soviet leadership on the cardinal issues such as the stand towards
imperialism, towards war and peace, towards peaceful coexistence,
towards the peaceful road, and so on, pointing out, at the same time,
what the Marxist-Leninist stand should be on these issues.

With Khrushchev’s advent to power, the Soviet leadership pursued a
policy advantageous to imperialism and to the detriment of peoples and
socialism in international problems. The revisionists were giving up
the struggle against imperialism and were making it many unprincipled
concessions and compromises. They prettified imperialism, preaching
that present day imperialism had allegedly changed its aggressive
nature that it could disarm and give up war. On the other hand, falling
victim to the atomic blackmail of the imperialists and their propaganda
of the horrors of war, they began to carry out the policy of retreat
and capitulation on all fronts and they demanded that all peoples turn
from class and revolutionary struggle and submit to imperialist
aggression.

Comrade Enver Hoxha upheld the Marxist-Leninist view that imperialism,
and first and foremost, U.S. imperialism, had changed neither its skin,
its hair nor its nature. It is aggressive and will be aggressive if
even a single tooth is left on its head». With many facts he proved
that, far from giving up war, imperialism is making all-round
preparations for war. «Whoever fails to see this», Comrade Enver Hoxha
pointed out, «is blind. Whoever sees it but covers it up, is a traitor
in the service of imperialism».

Comrade Enver Hoxha raised this problem in a principled
Marxist-Leninist way. Naturally, war is not inevitable and unavoidable,
but as long as imperialism exists, there will be the danger of war.
There can be no absolute guarantee that there will be no world war,
Comrade Enver Hoxha added, until socialism has triumphed throughout the
world or in most of the countries of the world. The important thing is
that no illusions should be entertained about imperialism and, when it
threatens war the peoples should be fully prepared both economically
and politically, as well as militarily, to cope with all eventualities
and to fight it tooth and nail. He exposed the fear and panic that had
gripped the revisionists and pointed out that the people are
indomitable, no army and no weapon can change the laws of history and
prevent the triumph of the revolution. When the people are conscious
about the war they are waging, when they are organized and united
against imperialism and its tools, they are completely able to contain
the aggressors, to defend the cause of peace and their freedom and
independence, to inflict irreparable defeat on imperialism.

The ten years which have elapsed since the Moscow Meeting have
demonstrated all the falsity of the revisionist views on imperialism
and the correct assessment and stand of the Marxist-Leninists towards
it. During this period, not only have the acts of aggression of U.S.
imperialism not been reduced, but they have been further increased.
U.S. imperialism launched its aggressive war on the Vietnamese people,
interfered in the Congo, strangled the revolution in the Dominican
Republic, sparked off the war in the Middle East, extended its
aggression to Laos and Cambodia, and so on and so forth. Far from
disarming, its armaments have exceeded all bounds, its military bases
have been further extended throughout the whole world. Everywhere it
brandishes its weapons, threatens the people with war in order to
strangle the revolution and suppress the people’s struggle for national
liberation. This has confirmed what the Marxist-Leninists said at the
Moscow Meeting that the capitulationist policy and stand of the
revisionists which, far from leading to a «world without war» and to
«eternal peace», encouraged the imperialists to extend and intensify
their aggressiveness. But in spite of their attempts, the imperialists
have been unable to suppress the revolutionary and liberation struggles
of the people. They are breaking out with ever greater fury and are
shaking the rotten capitalist and imperialist system to its very
foundations.

One of the issues around which a sharp struggle took place at the
Moscow Meeting was that of how peaceful coexistence should be
interpreted and carried out. Distorting the Leninist concept of
peaceful co-existence, the Khrushchevites interpreted it as a dying out
of the class struggle on a national and international level. This was
an anti-Marxist stand which covered up the basic contradictions of the
world, negated the revolution, disarmed the people and served as a mask
to justify the affinity and union of the revisionists with imperialism.

The Soviet leadership had proclaimed peaceful co-existence as the
general line of its foreign policy and wanted to impose it on all,
allegedly as the only way to the liberation of the peoples, to the
triumph of the revolution, to the building of socialism and to securing
peace. According to them, the working class and the people should
establish peaceful co-existence with their oppressors and aggressors,
they should give up their revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle.
In practice, this constituted a reactionary and counter-revolutionary
platform in favor of imperialism.

The Party of Labor of Albania defended its correct Marxist-Leninist
view that the liberation of peoples and the triumph of socialism are
not the fruits of peaceful co-existence or of peaceful competition, as
the modern revisionists preached, but of bitter class struggle, of
liberation and proletarian revolutions. The pursuance of the policy of
peaceful co-existence should be extended only to State relations with
the capitalist countries, without interrupting for one moment the
political and ideological struggle against imperialism, while giving
all aid and support to the liberation and revolutionary struggle of the
peoples of the world. Peaceful co-existence is only one aspect of the
foreign policy of the socialist countries and not at all the general
line of this policy as N. Khrushchev claimed. The fundamental principle
of the foreign policy of the socialist States is proletarian
internationalism.

«Peaceful co-existence between two contradictory systems» Comrade Hoxha
pointed out, «doesn’t imply that we should give up the class struggle
as the modem revisionists claim. On the contrary, the class struggle
should continue, the political and ideological struggle against
imperialism, against bourgeois and revisionist ideology should be
constantly intensified. While consistently striving to establish
Leninist peaceful coexistence, making no concessions of principle
whatsoever to imperialism, the class struggle in the capitalist
countries, as well as the national-liberation movement in colonial and
dependent countries should be further developed».

Ever since that time, the Soviet revisionists, proceeding from their
erroneous, anti-Marxist concepts about peaceful coexistence, from their
narrow nationalist interests and their desire to draw nearer to the
imperialists, have sacrificed the most vital interests of the people
and of the socialist countries. Such, for instance, was the flagrant
case of Khrushchev’s bargainings with Sophocles Venizelos at the
expense of Albania. Now, the revisionist leaders have made this stand
their normal course. To avoid falling out with the Americans, they
sacrificed the interests of the Cuban people during the Caribbean
events; in order to draw closer to Bonn, they are putting the German
Democratic Republic up to auction; in order to receive credits from
Japan, they trample underfoot the interests of the Korean people,
without mentioning their unprecedented treachery towards the Vietnamese
people and Arab countries.

Behind the revisionists’ slogans of peaceful co-existence is hidden
their ideological and political reconciliation with the enemies of the
revolution and socialism. Today, this reconciliation has reached the
point where U.S. imperialism, the greatest enemy of communism and the
revolution, has become the best ally and collaborator of the Soviet
Union. The crowning achievement of Khrushchevite co-existence is the
Soviet-U.S. alliance, the greatest counterrevolutionary alliance that
history has ever recorded.

Another brutal distortion of Leninism and historical experience, was
the so-called peaceful road, which the revisionists presented as a
major discovery of the XX Congress and as the general strategic line
for the transition to socialism.

Making great play about the change of the ratio of forces on the
international arena following the Second World War, the Khrushchevite
revisionists upheld the view that the teachings of Marxism-Leninism
about the revolution by violence, the smashing of the bourgeois state
apparatus and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
have become outdated. Now, under the new conditions, it has become
possible, according to them, to pass to socialism through reforms,
through winning the majority in the bourgeois parliament, through
gradual structural changes of the capitalist State, and so on. Thus,
the revisionists had revived and dressed up in a new garb the theories
of the revisionist chiefs of the Second Internationale and had taken
over the slogans of present day social-democracy.

The discussions about this problem at the Moscow Meeting were not of an
academic nature. Acceptance or non acceptance of revolution by
violence, of the need to smash the old State machinery and to replace
the bourgeois dictatorship with the dictatorship of the proletariat has
always been the line of demarcation between Marxism-Leninism and every
kind of opportunism and revisionism. To have come to terms with the
revisionist thesis of the peaceful road would have meant to slide
headlong into reformism and the complete rejection of the revolution
and the dictatorship of the proletariat. A return to Leninist
principles was vital for the communist movement.

Standing firm on these principles, Comrade Enver Hoxha stressed that
«no people, no proletariat and no communist or workers’ party have ever
taken power without bloodshed and without violence» It has never
happened and it will never happen, that the dominating and exploiting
classes have given up power or have given the workers freedom and
justice of their own free will. On the contrary, history, even that of
our days, has proved that whenever they see that their privileges and
power are at stake, they are the first to use violence, to kindle civil
war, to oppress the working masses by the force of arms. Therefore, the
general line of the transition to socialism is revolution by violence
for which you must be well prepared in an all-round way. Otherwise, as
Comrade Enver Hoxha emphasized: «the bourgeoisie may allow you to sing
psalms but then it deals you a fascist blow to the head and crushes
you, because you have not trained the necessary cadres to attack, nor
done illegal work, you have not prepared a place where you can be
protected and still work, nor the means with which to fight. We must
forestall this tragic eventuality». The events which took place later
in Indonesia proved to the letter the correctness of this warning.

Time has shown that those communist parties which succumbed to the
Soviet leadership and adopted the course of «the peaceful road»
degenerated entirely into reformist parties of the social-democratic
type, turning into political fractions of the bourgeoisie, into
«parties of order» for the defense of the capitalist order. By
renouncing the revolution, these parties crossed over to the
counter-revolutionary camp. They smother the revolutionary spirit of
the working class, try to poison the consciousness of the laboring
masses with bourgeois ideology and, while supporting the bourgeoisie
within their own country, in the international arena they support
imperialism and social imperialism, oppose the revolutionary and
liberation struggle of the people.

III

Today, when one reads Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech delivered at the
Moscow Meeting, one sees running through it like a red thread, the
great anxiety and concern of the Party of Labor of Albania about the
fate of the unity of the communist parties and socialist countries
which had been gravely undermined by the divisive activity of the
Khrushchevite revisionists. Our Party stressed that the departure of
the revisionists from Marxism-Leninism had led them to the brutal
violation of all the norms and principles which govern relations
between communist parties and socialist States. The examples of
interference, pressure and threats by the leadership of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union towards other parties, which Comrade Enver
Hoxha cited in this speech in Moscow, were truly disturbing.

Proceeding from their national egotism and great State chauvinism, the
revisionist leaders interfered unscrupulously into the internal affairs
of the socialist countries, violated their national sovereignty,
carried out subversive acts and sought by any means to establish their
control in all the fields of life. Through imposed agreements and under
the slogans of «the international division of labors, of
«specialization and cooperation», of «economic integration», and so on,
they strove to turn the socialist countries into appendages of the
economy of the Soviet Union, hindering the industrialization of these
countries, the creation of a developed, all-round economy, with the aim
of keeping them permanently hitched to their revisionist chariot.

In their relations with the communist parties, the Soviet
Khrushchevites persisted in practising patriarchal methods, took
dictatorial decisions and demand that they must be carried out blindly
by everyone. More and more frequently they faced the other parties with
accomplished facts on many important issues of common interest and
sought to turn these parties into instruments of their revisionist
foreign policy and of their diplomatic gambles.

All this indicated that the Soviet leaders would stop at nothing to
impose their line on others and to establish their own hegemony and
domination over the socialist countries and on the international
communist movement. They had become the greatest splitters of the
socialist camp and of communism.

While presenting the state of relations between Albanian and the Soviet
leaders, the delegation of the Party of Labor of Albania made it clear
that the differences which had arisen had to do not only with two
parties and countries. The behavior of the Khrushchevites towards the
Party of Labor and the People’s Republic of Albania was the expression
of the general line and practice they pursued towards all those who
defended Marxism-Leninism and the principles of proletarian
internationalism.

From an analysis of the events of the Bucharest Meeting and of those
which took place later between the Soviet leaders and the Communist
Party of China and our Party, Comrade Enver Hoxha arrived at the
correct conclusion, that behind the anti-Marxist methods and deeds of
the Soviet leaders lay their great state chauvinism, their attempts to
subjugate and direct all the others according to their whims.

While severely criticizing the situation created, for which the Soviet
leaders were to blame, Comrade Enver Hoxha defended the
Marxist-Leninist principles governing relations between communist
parties and between socialist States. He stressed that in the communist
movement there should be no big and small parties, parties to direct
and parties to carry out. All the vanguard detachments of the working
class are equal and independent. They formulate their own political
line. On the basis of the teaching of Marxism-Leninism, of the
conditions under which they act and their historical experience, they
bear full responsibility before their own people and international
communism. Far from excluding fraternal collaboration, coordination of
activities, joint elaboration of strategy and attitudes towards the
most important issues, especially, those relating to the struggle
against the common enemy, this makes them more essential. It goes
without saying that there may arise misunderstandings and disagreements
on this or that problem among our Parties. But these cannot and should
not be solved by the method of dictate, pressure, interference in
internal affairs, etc., as the Soviet revisionist leaders have done.
The only correct way is through constructive criticism in a comradely
communist, internationalist and high communist morality by achieving
unity through consultation.

These unshakable principles are the foundation of the relations among
socialist countries as well. By extending the ideological differences
even to the State relations, the Soviet leadership had trampled
underfoot the principles of friendship, fraternal collaboration and
mutual aid. In his speech, Comrade Enver Hoxha openly condemned the
great state chauvinist tendencies and practices of the group of Soviet
leaders. With special emphasis he warned against the tendency of the
joint international organizations of the socialist countries, like the
Warsaw Treaty and the Mutual Economic Aid Committee, to deviate from
their real aims and put themselves in the service of the policy of the
Soviet leaders for the subjection and domination of the member
countries.

The transformation of the nature of Soviet society, the
re-establishment of capitalism, could not but lead to a return to the
great State chauvinism and old expansionist and hegemonist policy of
Russian Czarism. History has proved that no capitalism and even less
that of a big State, can ever exist without attempting to exploit
other, beside their own people, without attempting to dominate other
countries and the whole world. It demands new places, other seas and
continents to seize in its predatory grip.

It was not by chance that the theory of limited sovereignty emerged. It
is a concentrated expression of the hegemonistic and expansionist
bourgeois ideology, a manifestation of the juridical concepts of Empire
and of the new imperialist policy from the positions of strength. The
occupation of Czechoslovakia was the most brutal expression of this
policy. But that was not the only one. Today in practice even the other
revisionist countries bound to the Soviet Union are under Soviet
military not to mention political and economic occupation.

Today, everyone can see how the Soviet foreign policy has degenerated.
The Warsaw Treaty and the Council of Mutual Economic Aid have been
transformed into simple instruments of the hegemonistic, aggressive and
colonialist policy of the Soviet social imperialists. In the name of
these agreements, they exploit other countries and hold them under
tight rein and, when these countries show signs of movement, they even
resort to guns and tanks.

In recent years the colonialist and neocolonialist tendencies of the
Soviet foreign policy have emerged more clearly into the light of day.
The penetration of the Soviet revisionists in the Middle East, their
presence in the Mediterranean and Indian waters, their emergence in the
Latin American market, etc., all bear the stamp of this policy. Like
the U.S. imperialists, the Soviet revisionists have become the greatest
dealers in arms, the instigators of counter-revolutionary plots and
fomenters of conflicts between the nations.

In its struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism, the People’s
Republic of Albania found itself on the same barricade with the
glorious Communist Party of China. Their joint struggle, the unity
between them, were by no means accidental. They were founded on loyalty
to Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, determination to
defend to the end the revolutionary cause of the working class and the
peoples of the world. The Bucharest and Moscow meetings strengthened
and tempered that collaboration and that militant unity between our two
Parties, which later became a decisive factor in the struggle against
the revisionist betrayal. Our Party has highly appraised and will
always highly appraise the great historic role of the Communist Party
of China, its colossal contribution to the defense of Marxism-Leninism.
Through the centuries the working class, the revolutionaries and
peoples of the whole world will recall and will respect the heroic and
glorious struggle of the Communist Party of China, with the outstanding
Marxist-Leninist, Comrade Mao Tsetung at the head, against modern
revisionism.

Regarding the Communist Party of China as a resolute and courageous
fighter in defense of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian
internationalism, in Moscow our Party exposed the plot of the Bucharest
meeting hatched up by Nikita Khrushchev. It defended the Communist
Party of China which had risen and was offering open resistance to the
revisionist course.

Even today, as Comrade Enver Hoxha has declared, our Party holds the
view that «it is an important internationalist duty of all the
revolutionaries of the world to stand by and support the Communist
Party of China», that «steel-like Marxist-Leninist solidarity with
China is decisive for the fate of the revolution and the liberation of
peoples».

* * *

Comrade Enver Hoxha’s speech at the Moscow Meeting was a brilliant
example of a correct, principled and revolutionary stand, of lofty
communist devotion to principle, of a genuine internationalist and
patriotic stand. He defended Marxism-Leninism against revisionist
betrayal; he defended proletarian internationalism against bourgeois
nationalism and great State chauvinism, the unity of the socialist camp
and the international communist movement against the splitting activity
of the Khrushchevite revisionists, the revolution against reformism; he
defended the freedom and independence of our Fatherland, the
achievements of socialism in Albania, against the brutal intervention,
pressure and undermining activities of the Soviet leadership.

At that time, there were many who accused our Party claiming that its
attitude was dictated by narrow nationalist sentiments. This accusation
was a testimony to the revisionists’ lack of real arguments. The
interference of the Soviet leaders in the internal affairs of our Party
and our country was preposterous. Through their hostile activity, they
hampered the normal development of our economy, they damaged the high
interests of Albania in the international arena. Under these
conditions, the Albanian communists would not be called communists if
they had failed to resolutely defend to the end the interests of the
people and of their socialist Fatherland. We declared war on
Khrushchevite revisionism with the full conviction that we were
defending, not only the national interests of our country and of
socialism in Albania, but also the interests of revolution and
international communism. This was an expression of the lofty
internationalist spirit of the Party of Labor of Albania.

In order to shake us from our clear-cut internationalist stand and to
divert us from our revolutionary course, the Soviet leaders became very
«generous» in offering us all kinds of aid, in declaring that they were
very ready to correct some of their mistakes in our inter-state
relations, etc. Our Party stood firm on its consistent Marxist-Leninist
line. It took on this gigantic struggle fully aware that is was
fighting in defence of a great cause of principle, against the mortal
danger which threatened communism. In this struggle the great
ideological clarity of our Party which, though small and relatively
young, knew how to detect the revisionist betrayal right at the start
and to take a correct revolutionary stand towards it, was expressed
once again.

Demonstrated here with special force, was the revolutionary courage of
our Party of Labor, which, regardless of the authority and power of the
Soviet Union and its party at the time, despite the grave reprisals it
might have to suffer from them, courageously rose and publicly exposed
the treacherous line of the modern revisionists. The boldness and
courage of the Party of Labor of Albania were such as to make certain
persons describe its stand as adventurist. Now it has already been
proved that this stand of the Party of Labor of Albania was the only
correct one. Its determination to have its say openly, sprang from its
sense of great responsibility for the fate of socialism in the world
and in Albania and from its unshakeable confidence in the justice of
the cause it was defending.

While concentrating its fire against the Khrushchevite revisionist
leadership, the Party of Labor of Albania has never identified the
latter with the Soviet people and the Soviet Union. The accusations of
anti-Sovietism which they made against us were and are in flagrant
contradiction to historical truth and reality. Our love for the Soviet
Union was great and sincere. We loved the Soviet people as the first
people in the world to carry out the proletarian revolution and
inaugurate the epoch of socialism, who established the dictatorship of
the proletariat and built a new socialist society. We loved the Soviet
Union because it was the base of world revolution and a powerful
supporter of the national-liberation movement, because it was the
standard bearer of the struggle against imperialism in defense of
peace, democracy and social progress. Through its heroic struggle the
Soviet Union crushed Hitlerite Germany, saved the world from the Nazi
plague, and rendered a decisive contribution to the liberation of
peoples, our people included. Our stern criticism of the line of the
Soviet leadership is inseparable from these pure and sincere sentiments
of friendship and love of our people for the Soviet Union which our
Party had cultivated and implanted deep in the hearts of the communists
and of the Albanian people as a whole. We were defending the great and
glorious achievements of the Soviet people which Khrushchev and Co.
were trampling underfoot, we were defending the prestige, honor and
authority, which the Soviet Union and its Communist Party, founded by
the great Lenin, had rightly enjoyed up to that time.

Hence, it was not we, the Albanians, who were anti-Soviet, but the
Soviet revisionist leaders themselves and all those who sided with them
in their course of treason, in their course of undermining the
dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism in the Soviet Union.

IV

The stand of the Party of Labor of Albania and of the Communist Party
of China at the Moscow Meeting defeated the schemes of the
revisionists. Enraged and terrified at having been exposed and taking
their clue from Nikita Khrushchev, they flung themselves like a pack of
wolves on our Party and country. They acted in the same way against
China.

Now, all are acquainted with the stages of the struggle which was
sparked off at the Moscow Meeting. The revisionists launched a fierce
struggle on all fronts and with all means against socialist Albania.
They sought to sabotage the socialist construction in our country, to
isolate Albania politically in the international arena, to undermine
the leadership of the Party of Labor of Albania from within, to sow
discord among the ranks of our Party and our people. They uttered
monstrous slanders against the Party of Labor of Albania and claimed
that it would capitulate and fall into the lap of the imperialists. In
this too they judged and acted as anti-Marxists. Socialist Albania not
only stood like a granite rock and successfully withstood their
onslaught, but it forged ahead along its revolutionary road thus
showing the invincible strength of its people and Party, their
steel-like unity, the unconquerable force of victorious
Marxism-Leninism and socialism.

In fact, socialism was undermined in the Soviet Union and in the other
countries where revisionists hold sway. Not we but they have become
politically isolated from their own people and the revolutionary
peoples of the world; not we but they have joined hand with the
imperialists. It was they not we who were smashed. Thanks to the
principled and courageous struggle of the Party of Labor of Albania,
the Communist Party of China and the other Marxist-Leninist parties and
forces, the mask was torn from the revisionists exposing them as
traitors to Marxism-Leninism and enemies of the peoples and socialism.

An inevitable consequence of the fight against revisionism was the
process of differentiation in the communist movement, the creation of
new Marxist-Leninist groups, organizations and parties, which represent
the most conscious and revolutionary section of the proletariat. This
is a further major success of Marxism-Leninism over modern revisionism.

The new Marxist-Leninist movement took in its hand and raised aloft the
banner of Marxism-Leninism which the revisionist parties had sullied
and rejected. It has overcome and is overcoming with success the
difficulties of growing up and is forging ahead nonstop along the road
of consolidation and is solving correctly a range of important
ideological, political and organisational problems of strategy and
tactics, which life and revolutionary struggle have brought and are
continually bringing to the fore. The new Marxist-Leninist parties are
fighting and resolutely rooting out all sorts of revisionist influences
in all fields — ideological and political — in the forms of
organization of struggle, in their method and style of work. Day in,
day out, they are forging the true features of the proletarian party of
the new type, they are extending and consolidating their national and
international Marxist-Leninist unity.

Now, following the degeneration of a number of communist parties into
revisionist parties, the working class and the masses of the people in
different countries have, once again, a banner of struggle, clear
objectives and a correct and loyal leadership in their great class
battles to overthrow capitalism and imperialism. Every passing day, the
masses are becoming more and more convinced that it is not the
misleading sermons of the revisionists, which are armed at quelling or
smothering any genuine revolutionary movement of action, but the line
of the Marxist-Leninist party which shows them the right road to social
and national liberation.

Ten years after the Moscow Meeting, the situation in the revisionist
camp is deplorable. Far from being able to go down in history as
Marxist-Leninists and to establish their sway in the communist
movement, today the Soviet revisionists are incapable of keeping their
grip on the reins and subduing ever their closest allies, the other
revisionist cliques. The more intense the fight of Marxism-Leninism
against revisionism becomes, the more the revisionists disintegrate,
degenerate and the nearer they come to their final defeat.

The ever growing contradictions and splits in the revisionist ranks, on
both the national and international scale, as well as within the
various revisionist parties, can no longer be covered up. The so-called
«unity», about which the Soviet revisionists raise such a great hue and
cry is rotten, formal and false. In the revisionist countries it is
maintained only from fear of Soviet bayonets, whereas in the
revisionist parties in the capitalist countries, the discords are more
obvious. There, the revisionists are divided into pro-Soviet and
anti-Soviet cliques. The erstwhile control of the Soviet ruling clique
has suffered heavy and irreparable blows.

Right from the beginning, our Party said, and life has proved, that
from opportunism in policy and ideology it is only one step to going
over to the camp of armed counter-revolution. The leaders of the Soviet
Union quickly took this step. «The reestablished capitalist system»
Comrade Enver Hoxha has pointed out, «cannot fail to impose its
barbarous laws, not only on the internal life of the country but also
on the field of foreign policy. Foreign aggression has always
corresponded to internal fascistization.

The emergence of the new Soviet revisionist imperialism, which already
aspires not only to exercise its hegemony over the international worker
and communist movement, but also to establish its political and
military domination over the whole world, has created a new situation
and, consequently, has set new tasks before the forces and peoples who
are fighting for national liberation and social emancipation. With the
transition of the Soviet Union to social-imperialism, modern
revisionism is no longer merely an ideological trend within the
communist movement, as it was at the end of the 50’s, but a great
capitalist and imperialist State power.

Today, the weight and influence of the Soviet Union which heads modern
revisionism, is not exercised so much in the ideological field, but
through its economic and. for the most part, its military State power.
When someone speaks today of «the hand of Moscow», he does not allude
to its revolutionary inspiration or internationalist aid, but to
imperialist intrigues, the roubles of Brezhnyev and Kosygin or the
gunboats of Gretchko and Jakubovski. And the contradictions among the
revisionist cliques in different countries should be looked for, not so
much in the field of ideology, although they are often clothed in that
garb, but, first and foremost, in the field of State relations which
every country or group maintains with the Soviet Union.

Under such conditions, the character of the fight against Khrushchevite
revisionism cannot fail to be changed also in conformity with the
changes it has made and the aspect it has assumed. The ideological
struggle against it should be intensified and carried through to the
end, to its complete destruction. But today this would not be enough.
Now the question is to fight Khrushchevite modern revisionism not only
on the ideological field but also as a capitalist and imperialist
power. For the Marxist-Leninists and genuine revolutionaries there can
no more be peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union than there can be
with the imperialism of the United States of America. «By betraying
Marxism-Leninism» Comrade Enver Hoxha has said, «the Khrushchevite
modern revisionists of the Soviet Union have set the Soviet Union, its
great prestige won thanks to the heroism of the Soviet people, and its
economic and military power, against the world proletariat, against the
liberation of peoples. From a base for revolution, they have turned the
Soviet Union into a supporter of world capitalism. Therefore, to
support these traitors is to betray the revolution and the peoples.

Today, when Khrushchevite revisionism has gone over to
social-imperialism, the struggle for true international peace and
security, the struggle for the liberation of the peoples and triumph of
the revolution, the struggle for the triumph and in defence of
socialism, must no longer be directed only against U.S. imperialism,
but also against the new Soviet imperialism as well. The source of all
evils is imperialism as a whole, as a system, its aggressive policy.
And an integral part of this system today is the new Soviet revisionist
imperialism which has already assumed all the features of classic
imperialism. The struggle on two fronts which is gradually blending
into a single one, is an objective necessity imposed by reality. No
revolutionary force can stand aside for otherwise, the consequences
would be catastrophic for it.

Faced with major internal and external difficulties, the Soviet
revisionists are trying to maneuver. Just as they keep calling for
«cessation of the polemics» with the Marxist-Leninists now, they are
calling for the establishment of peaceful co-existence and for
relations of a State level and so on. It is not hard to understand what
their maneuver is aimed at. If, in the first place, they wish to avoid
further exposure, in the second, they want to paralyze and neutralise
the principal opponents of their struggle, to extinguish the revolution
and the national-liberation wars.

In order to win over as many forces as possible, and, especially, to
divert the attention of world public opinion from their hegemonist
schemes, the Soviet revisionists are trying to present their
contradictions with the United States as contradictions between a
socialist country and an imperialist one. The «anti-imperialist» pose
of the revisionists is a bluff from top to bottom. The actual
contradictions between the Soviet Union and the USA are not
contradictions between a socialist country and an imperialist one, but
between two imperialist Powers over the sharing of the domination of
the world.

Our Party has clearly expressed its stand regarding these maneuvers of
the revisionists. They hold no water with us. Just as we are not scared
by armed threats neither are we deceived by demagogy with the olive
branch. We will fight revisionism through to the end, to its complete
political and ideological collapse, to the ultimate triumph of
socialism and communism.

*
*
*

Ten years after the meeting of the communist and workers’ parties in
Moscow the great conclusion that our Party had drawn as far back as at
that Conference, that «the modern revisionists are nothing but
splitters of the communist movement and of the socialist camp, the
loyal servitors of imperialism, sworn enemies of socialism and the
working class« has been completely vindicated.

One important lesson we draw from our Party’s fight at the Moscow
meeting is that differences of principles should not be hushed up. The
only correct policy is that based on principles. The fight against
revisionism is a class struggle between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, between socialism and capitalism and, as such, it should
be carried through to the end.

Comrade Enver Hoxha's historic speech at the Moscow meeting armed the
communists and the whole Albanian people with a sound theoretical basis
and with a clear-cut program of struggle against revisionism. In
Comrade Enver Hoxha’s words they found the courage, determination and
revolutionary inspiration to stand unyielding before the frenzied
attacks of the Soviet revisionists and their allies. They saw embodied
in them the best features of our Party forged during the whole of its
glorious revolutionary course. It is because our policy was based on
such a correct Marxist-Leninist line that we were able to stand
heroically, to fight and triumph over the revisionists.

When Khrushchevite revisionism emerged and. especially, when it usurped
power in the Soviet Union and .in certain other socialist countries,
the bourgeoisie and world reaction as a whole rubbed their hands with
joy and prophesied the end of the revolution of socialism and of
Marxism-Leninism. But they were soon disillusioned.

Far from failing, Marxism-Leninism was raised to a new and higher level
in battle with revisionist betrayal. It illuminates and will continue
to illuminate the road of revolution for the peoples. Socialism
develops and marches ahead with sure steps, being daily enriched with
new historical experience, in China, in Albania, and in other
countries. The flames of the revolution are spreading furiously in
Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in all continents. Neither armed
aggression nor revisionist deception have been or will ever be able to
extinguish them. Its triumphant advance is unceasing.